Idle Games helps you find new friends in social games

Social gaming company Idle Games launched its first social game, Idle Worship, today at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 conference in San Francisco.

Idle Worship is a social game where you create little creatures called Mudlings and try to make them believe you are a god. You can do that buy showing them with miracles or cursing them — making them love you or fear you. You can ship your Mudlings over to other players’ worlds and try to convert their Mudlings to your religion.

The game is powered by the “Idle Engine,” a social recommendation engine that connects players that they otherwise might not know. The game recommends new social connections for players by analyzing a player’s Facebook profile. It creates “social context,” like flicking Mudlings from one gamer’s world to another gamer’s world, to start conversations and create social connections.

It results in a much larger world than a game made by a company like Zynga, which relies on bringing friends in externally, Idle Games chief executive Jeffrey Hyman said. Part of the reason is because of the engine, but the other part is because the game connects gamers that are playing at the same time and creating a reason for them to talk to each other, Idle Games chief executive Jeffrey Hyman said.

“The only sustainable business plan in the entertainment industry is quality, and you need to have a social game with the ability to play synchronously,” Hyman said. “It creates one of the first truly social games on Facebook — it was created be a casual game with all the benefit of a massive world.”

Idle Games makes money like other social gaming companies by selling virtual goods. That comes in multiple flavors, like creating idols for gods in each world. “If you’re going to sell people things that don’t actually exist, the least you can actually do is make it look decent and good,” Hyman said.

Idle Games was founded in November 2009, and has raised $9 million in funding. The company is located in San Francisco, Calif. The company is working on two other games powered by its social recommendation Idle Engine.